scholarly journals Regime cycles and political change in African autocracies

2021 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 415-437
Author(s):  
Andrea Carboni ◽  
Clionadh Raleigh
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Regime Change ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Regime Shifts ◽  
Potential Success

ABSTRACTThis article applies a regime cycle framework to understand patterns of change and continuity in African competitive autocracies. We observe that regime change in African autocracies is rarely the result of actions carried out by rebels, opposition leaders or popular masses substantially altering the structure of power. Instead, they are more frequently carried out by senior regime cadres, resulting in controlled reshuffles of power. We argue that such regime shifts are best explained through a cyclical logic of elite collective action consisting of accommodation and consolidation, and ultimately leading to fragmentation and crisis. These dynamics indicate the stage of leader-elite relationships at a given time, and suggest when regimes may likely expand, contract, purge and fracture. We argue that, by acknowledging in which stage of the cycle a regime and its senior elites are dominant, we can gauge the likelihood as well as the potential success of a regime change. Our framework is finally applied to understand recent regime shifts in competitive autocracies across Africa.

Collective Action and Political Change: Public and Semipublic Strategies of Brazilian Rural Movements (1990s–2017)

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (5) ◽  
pp. 113-130
Author(s):  
Priscila Delgado de Carvalho
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Regime Change ◽  
Political Change ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Government

A study of the Brazilian Movimento dos Pequenos Agricultores during recent moments of regime change suggests two main strategies for understanding the impacts of political change on social movement action: assessing the degree of political proximity between activists and the government and the presence or absence of institutional venues for interaction and looking beyond the public expressions of contention to consider semipublic action. When there is political proximity the public activities of movements tend to be less contentious, and when there are institutional venues for interaction protests will be routinized rather than disruptive. When proximity is lacking activists are likely to perform disruptive protests and to give priority to disputing meanings within society and within their own constituencies. Um estudo do Movimento dos Pequenos Agricultores do Brasil durante momentos recentes de mudança de regime sugere duas estratégias principais para entender os impactos das mudanças políticas na ação do movimento social: avaliar o grau de proximidade política entre ativistas e o governo e a presença ou ausência de espaços institucionais para interação e olhar além das expressões públicas de discórdia para considerar a ação semipública. Quando há proximidade política, as atividades públicas dos movimentos tendem a ser menos contenciosas e, quando existem canais institucionais para interação, tende-se a rotinas de protestos pouco disruptivos. Quando falta proximidade, é provável que os ativistas dêem prioridade a protestos disruptivos e a disputas de significados na sociedade e dentro de seus próprios quadros.

Self-Undermining Rhetoric in the Past and Present

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Seth Levine
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Policy Change ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Economic Insecurity ◽  
The Past ◽  
Broad Concept ◽  
The Face

This chapter considers the prospects for political change in the face of communicative barriers to collective action. It begins to address this question by identifying several of the most well-known historical and recent moments in which there was large-scale mobilization on some economic insecurity issues. This discussion, in concert with the empirical findings in this book, helps clarify the prospects for political action (and policy change) on these issues. The chapter then uses the findings from the book to identify three types of people that are most likely to become active. It also talks about the implications of having this (narrower) set of people active as opposed to the full range of people that find the issues to be important. It concludes by reiterating how self-undermining rhetoric is a broad concept that can apply in many different situations beyond those considered herein.

Remembering Our Roots

2011 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 388-388
Author(s):  
Nathan J. Brown
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Regime Change ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Regional Analysis ◽  
The Past ◽  
Science Disciplines

Scholars of the Middle East based in social science disciplines—especially my own, political science—are likely to feel a bit more welcome by their colleagues as a result of recent events in the Middle East. Not only will we be informative conversationalists in the hallways for a while because of our regional expertise, but also, far more profoundly, the sorts of things that political scientists study, from voting patterns to regime change, are suddenly interesting subjects in the region. This is not to say that Middle East elections were not studied in the past or that research on political change was not undertaken—far from it. But the questions posed, the terms used, and tools employed were often different from those more prevalent in the discipline. Political scientists focusing on the Middle East are therefore likely to find this a gratifying time, ripe with opportunities for comparative and cross-regional analysis. And those nonregional specialists whose interests lie in a wide variety of topics from voting behavior to revolutions may work harder to incorporate Middle Eastern cases into their own work.

Regime Cycles: Democracy, Autocracy, and Revolution in Post-Soviet Eurasia

2005 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry E. Hale
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Regime Change ◽  
Regime Type ◽  
Institutional Logic ◽  
Cyclic Dynamics

Research on regime change has often wound up chasing events in the post-Soviet world because it has frequently assumed that regime change, if not simple instability, implies a trajectory toward a regime-type endpoint like democracy or autocracy. A supplemental approach recognizes that regime change can be cyclic, not just progressive, regressive, or random. In fact, regime cycles are much of what we see in the postcommunist world, where some states have oscillated from autocracy toward greater democracy, then back toward more autocracy, and, with recent “colored revolutions,” toward greater democracy again. An institutional logic of elite collective action, focusing on the effects of patronalpresidentialism, is shown to be useful in understanding such cyclic dynamics, explaining why “revolutions” occurred between 2003 and 2005 in Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan but not in countries like Russia, Azerbaijan, and Uzbekistan.

Toward a Democratic Civil Peace? Democracy, Political Change, and Civil War, 1816–1992

2001 ◽  
Vol 95 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Håvard Hegre
Keyword(s):  
Domestic Violence ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Regime Change ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Political Transition ◽  
End Point ◽  
Transition Experience ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Civil Violence

Coherent democracies and harshly authoritarian states have few civil wars, and intermediate regimes are the most conflict-prone. Domestic violence also seems to be associated with political change, whether toward greater democracy or greater autocracy. Is the greater violence of intermediate regimes equivalent to the finding that states in political transition experience more violence? If both level of democracy and political change are relevant, to what extent is civil violence related to each? Based on an analysis of the period 1816–1992, we conclude that intermediate regimes are most prone to civil war, even when they have had time to stabilize from a regime change. In the long run, since intermediate regimes are less stable than autocracies, which in turn are less stable than democracies, durable democracy is the most probable end-point of the democratization process. The democratic civil peace is not only more just than the autocratic peace but also more stable.

Cross-Regional Comparisons: The Arab Uprisings as Political Transitions and Social Movements

2013 ◽  
Vol 46 (02) ◽  
pp. 217-221
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Paczynska
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
Political Transitions ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Political Dynamics ◽  
Arab Uprisings ◽  
New Research ◽  
And Diffusion

The Arab uprisings, like the fall of the Berlin Wall more than two decades ago, are watershed events that have raised fundamental questions about our understanding of the processes of political change, the emergence and diffusion of contentious collective action, and the role of the international context in facilitating or hindering political change. The uprisings have further strengthened a growing focus within Middle Eastern studies on framing questions about the social, economic, and political dynamics in the region in ways that allow for more robust linkages with comparative theorizing about the dynamics of contentious collective action and the processes of political change. In other words, the Arab uprisings have injected new energy into the comparative study of contentious politics. In addition to new research agendas the uprisings have also provided opportunities for introducing students in survey and theory courses to the region's political dynamics, enriching students' engagement with theoretical concepts and honing their critical thinking and analytical skills while making the Middle East less “exceptional” for the students. Here, I focus on how incorporating of Middle Eastern cases allows instructors to raise questions and engage students in discussions about the emergence and diffusion of contentious collective action.

L'Etat et ses trois niveaux: le régime, la gouverne et la politie

1982 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 227-258 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gérard Bergeron
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Interest Groups ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Social Classes ◽  
Federal State ◽  
Multiple State ◽  
New Formulation ◽  
Action Groups

The State and Its Three Levels: Regime, Governance and PolityThis article is not simply a summary of the analytical framework already presented in the earlier, principal theoretical works of the author. It goes beyond the simple exercise of schematic brevity by adding some new elements: the notion of collective action groups between those of social classes and interest groups; a first transposition of a schema conceived for the classical unitary state to one applicable to the federal, or “multiple,” state; and a new formulation of the three analytical levels, specifically those characterizing this theoretical framework, which go by the labels of “regime,” “governance,” and “polity.”The article is divided into three parts corresponding to the study of the three levels and connected by an equal number of “thresholds” of levels. The conclusion points out the lines of transposition for the study of a federal state and the directions of research for the analysis of political change.

The Study of European Political Development

1977 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 462-475 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter H. Merkl
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Political Change ◽  
State Building ◽  
Organizational Life ◽  
Full Circle ◽  
Building Process ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Model ◽  
Current Return

The evolution of theories of political development has gone full circle with its current “return to Europe” and to history. Scholars are once more examining the early state-building process and especially the extractive and repressive activities of its military, bureaucratic, and taxation systems. A geographical and historical model of the timing of state formation in Europe since 1500 reveals situations and necessities that explain much of the history of various European states. The changing dynamics of collective action and violence since 1830, moreover, reflect the underlying transformation of society and organizational life. But it is still too early to attempt an exhaustive synthesis of the different theories of crisis and political change.

The Heresthetics of Coup Making

1991 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 344-364 ◽  
Author(s):  
YOUSSEF COHEN
Keyword(s):  
Game Theory ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Choice ◽  
Regime Change ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
Social Choice Theory ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
Military Regimes ◽  
The Relationship

Heresthetics is a term coined by Riker to refer to the stratagems used by politicians to manipulate the structure of a decision-making situation. The object of such manipulation is to force one's opponents into a choice of alternatives such that, whichever alternative is chosen, the opponents will lose. The main argument of this article is that military coups and regimes are largely the outcomes of successful heresthetical maneuvers. In this article my argument is applied to the emergence of the Brazilian military regime of 1964. But the argument should apply more widely. At the very least, this preliminary exercise should stimulate more research on the strategic maneuvers that engender military regimes and other forms of political change. By investigating the relationship between heresthetics and regime change this article also shows how social choice theory and game theory can be used to complement and enrich current explanations of political change.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document